Nicholas Wapshott

Isolationism is back in the news. The big thinkers of the Tea Party, in their pursuit of slashing taxes, lowering public spending, and severely shrinking the size and power of the federal government, have revived an idea that has not been respectable among senior Republicans for more than 70 years. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky believes that, to encourage more young people to vote for the GOP, the party should stop chasing divisive social issues, like incarcerating people for petty drug offenses, and take up civil liberties issues, like protecting American suspected terrorists on American soil from being summarily executed by American drones.

The comedian Peter Cook once joked, “I could have been a judge, but I never had the Latin.” Instead, he became a coal miner. “They only ask one question. They say, ‘Who are you?’ And I got 75 percent for that.” As the laughter subsided, Cook added a satirical kicker. “Being a miner, as soon as you are too old and tired and sick and stupid to do the job properly, you have to go. Well, the very opposite applies with the judges.”

The most recent episode in the long-running Punch and Judy show between Sarah Palin and Karl Rove is shedding light on the schism between old-school Republicans and the Tea Party insurgents who are steadily pushing them aside. It appears it is not merely Palin’s personal antipathy to Rove that drives her spleen but a contempt for the dark arts he employs.

The outcome of the sequester ultimatum appears to have taken everyone by surprise. Two long summers ago, when the president and House speaker John Boehner conjured a prospect so terrible that even spending on defense would be deeply cut, they both assumed Congress would buckle rather than approve such a blow to the nation’s pride. According to Bob Woodward’s The Price of Politics, Boehner said, “Guys, this would be devastating to Defense. This is never going to happen.”